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Niche Site Duel 009: I’m On the First Page of Google!

By Pat Flynn on October 27, 2010

Yep! That’s right! In almost exactly 2 months since the creation of my niche site for the niche site duel with Tyrone Shum, my site is now sitting at the #6 spot in Google for my primary keyword, as shown below in Market Samurai.

August 25th: Site went live. Not ranked.

August 29th: #184

September 6th: #162

September 8th: #135

September 9th: #119

September 13th: #117

September 14th: #53

September 21st: #38

September 29th: #27

October 22nd: #16

October 27th: #6

I announced on Twitter and Facebook yesterday that I was sitting at #8, but I have since climbed another 2 spots, which is awesome.

After the announcement, some people immediately responded that they searched and saw me on the first page of Google, while others said they couldn’t find me until the 2nd or 3rd page, and sometimes up to the 6th page for the exact same keyword. In the happy and celebratory video below, I briefly explain why this happens, and I give you a quick method to find your best “true” search engine ranking.

The lighting is off, I know. I was using two halogen lights and a lamp without a shade, lol. I really need to invest in some studio lighting equipment if I’m going to continue doing videos like this! Here is a link to Darren’s Productivity Video which inspired this one. Obviously, he knows what he’s doing.

As I mentioned in the video, a couple other niche site duel participants are already ranking in the top 10 and starting to see money come in through their sites, based on the reports that have been coming in:

Congratulations to Eric & Spencer for making money already – well done! If you’re participating and making money from your niche site already too, please let me know so I can give you credit.

The Process Works

Everything I’ve outlined for you since day 1 absolutely works. I’m using the same strategies I learned from the Top 5 of Google Within 40 Day Challenge thread that I came across in the Warrior Forum (thanks for that Joseph), which I’m obviously really happy I spent a few hours reading. Note: it’s very long, but it’s worth it.

I have been experimenting with some software and services to help me automate or speed up some of the work. Some of the software totally rocks, and some of them totally blow – or at least aren’t worth the money I invested. I’d like to spend a little bit more time with them before recommending them (or not), but I’ll soon come out with a post that will show you everything I’ve been working with, just so you know what’s available.

One Last Traffic Strategy

Before I finish up, I want to share with you where most of the traffic coming to my niche site is coming from. It’s not coming from my primary keyword (although that may change now that I’m on the first page of Google), and it’s not coming from the articles I’ve written and posted on EzineArticles.com.

I’ve briefly mentioned this in a previous post, but it’s important to understand: most of my traffic is coming from super long-tail keywords that I never purposely targeted. There are several hundred different combinations of words related to my niche that I’m seeing hits for, as you can see below:

True, for each super long-tail keyword I’m getting only one or two hits, but over several hundred different terms, it definitely adds up.

So, what does this mean?

This means that one of the best ways to get traffic is to write a lot of relevant content. The more posts you publish, the more chances there are for people to find your niche site through terms other than the one you are targeting.

This means that you can begin to earn money form your site before you reach the first page of Google. It also means that you’re probably producing quality content that will eventually lead you to the first page of Google anyways, just like I have today.

Those “three post set and forget blogs” (blogs that people set up that only include 3 posts before being left on auto-pilot) used to work, and depending on the niche they can still perform very well, but the bottom line is that if you produce more content, you will be found. If you’re worried about your rankings, don’t. Just write and publish a lot of relevant content, and you’ll do just fine.

What was that keyword again? Shoot let me go back and check in your posts.

Absolutely awesome results. Hats off to you Pat. Well done!

On a quick note can you provide us an estimated time input that you put in?

I believe this will help others to have a better understanding of what is required to achieve this kind of results especially a newbie [granted they may have to take into consideration skill levels ie. use of Market Samurai, vetting writer, etc].

Pat

Hi Azzam,

I’ll have to sit down for a moment and calculate out approximately how much time I put in, but honestly it wasn’t TOO much – most of it was spent writing content.

As far as the keyword, I don’t like to mention it here much. It’s my attempt to try and not skew any of the results or search engine traffic. My primary keyword is shown in the first screenshot of this post, but in case you missed it, it’s “security guard training”.

I noticed that you said you mostly spent time writing content. Did you write them yourself? Or do you outsource that? Just curious.

Pat

I do my best to keep control of what gets published and I write everything on my own. Some of the services I was using wrote articles and blog posts for me, but I didn’t really like what I saw, so I’ve been sticking with my own writing power.

Steve

Pat is correct. Outsourcing has it’s place, but when it comes to content writing, it is very hard to find a VA or other service that can adequately capture your voice, your message and that mysterious “thing” that makes you, you. I’m of the opinion that outsourcing content generation is just as likely to hurt your business, as opposed to help. The more unique or specialized your niche, the more this is true.

This is awesome. I am enjoying looking over your shoulder as you progress in this duel. An incredible learning tool for me.

To see you and Eric already ranking well and even earning a little income is exciting and inspiring. As someone starting out it is great to see the potential that a smartly built niche website can have.

On a side note, can do you think my Dallas Cowboys could borrow Philip Rivers for awhile?

Pat, you are absolutely CRUSHING it here. You jumped up to #6 really fast – from my experience when I’ve gotten onto the first page of Google with sites before, I spent a lot of time in the 8-10 spots before finally making my way up. You seem to have the pedal to the metal on this one.

Thanks for the link, by the way, I really appreciate it.

Pat

Well – I hope I can get into the top 3 sometime soon too, but now the competition is stiff, so we’ll have to wait and see what happens!

Your niche site duel finally worth the effort. It is not easy to stick to the work until we succeed. And I’m pretty sure theres a lot of challenges that coming up to you along the way.

But, guess what? You managed to overcome it. I’m sorry if I look much more excited than you. But it is really a good news and great achievement!

Thumbs up Pat!

Pat

Thanks for the excitement about the achievement, Aqif! I’m excited too! Although I wasn’t sure how long it would take, I knew I was going to make the first page eventually, based on all of the research I’ve done (and shared) with everyone. Thanks Aqif! I appreciate it!

Hey Pat,
Awesome job on the niche site progress. You show up as no. 9 on my search, but I’m sure that you’ll be up to the top in a few weeks. I will definitely check out the “40 day challenge” forum you mentioned, but first I need to make it through the monster “basic overview of SEO” on that same site, most all of which is relatively new to me. I love following your blog though! keep it up.

Brett

Pat

Thanks Brett! That Basic SEO Overview post is awesome – I definitely recommend it to anyone who needs an SEO crash course!

Can’t wait to see how it turns out overall once you’re hitting #1 – just think, so many different monetization strategies can be set in motion – I’m sure we’re going to see it pop up in the income reports from now on

Your niche has a lot of potential because of the localization angle. I agree that more content brings you more traffic. A blog or webpage is like a tree and each page is like a root sucking in water and nutrients (traffic) from different sources. I think you clearly demonstrated that in this post.

Pat, this is so motivating! Thank you for sharing these strategies. I’ve had a product for three years, and until I started reading your blog realized I wasn’t optimized for the very key word that described my product! So, I quickly bought a new URL with the words in it, downloaded Market Samarai, and Now I’m starting to write articles for linkbacks. And THANK you for telling me to sign out of google to see my position. It drives me crazy that after a few visits to my new site, google puts it on the first page, just because they know I’ll go there, although I know my true position was #42
Keep it up, and I’ll keep reading!!

Curious to see how the income changes from #6 to when you hit #1. Congrats man, you’re a content maniac and it’s paying off…not to mention you chose a great niche phrase.

Pat

I’m curious too – although I will be attempting to implement some more monetization strategies, so hopefully it will go up! I was looking at putting in a job board too, which seems like it would make sense to put on a site like this.

Yeah I was about to respond – thanks Jason. As I mentioned to Azzam, I don’t like to write it out because I’d like to not skew any search engine results…but nonetheless, you can see it on the first screenshot. In case you missed it, it’s “security guard training”. Thanks!

Hey Pat…that’s awesome! The quality of your site is outstanding and certainly is a big reason your site is doing so well in the rankings. Also, I TOTALLY agree on the importance of “long tail” keywords…its typical that the majority of your traffic will come from these “unplanned for” searches.

Anyway, great job…and thanks for mentioning my Niche Site, and I will keep you posted on how it does!

Pat

Thanks for stopping by Spencer! You’re doing excellent in the challenge, and I wouldn’t be surprised if your niche site just takes off like crazy. It’s had a great start, so keep up the great work. Cheers!

KimP

This is great Pat and congrats! Imagine if you rinsed and repeated this method with other topics.

Congrats on getting into the top 10! I too have recently ‘discovered’ the 40 Day Challenge and am in the process of trying to absorb all the information. I’m so happy that it has worked for you and hope that it works equally as well for me. All your hard work paid off!

Wow that was pretty quick, but then again you’re really working at it. My blog, which just started (as you know), is the first one on the 2nd page of Google. All I’ve done so far is install the “All-In-One SEO Pack” plugin at WordPress, and just write tons of relevant content. I bet if I implemented some more of your tips I could go higher much faster. This Niche Site Duel is a goldmine of solid, actionable info. So awesome!

Outstanding job Pat.
One thing I noticed based on your site stats is that Google Page Rank is not a major factor when becoming established – and is not the “end all be all.” Based on the info, what’s more relevant are: 1.) Keyword Density, 2.) Internal & External links, are the biggest factors contributing to your success. And essentially, this happens due to having quality content.
It would be great to see a numerical breakdown of the each element that produced the results as to create a framework. For example, # of articles created, # of links used, # of posts & pages on the site. This way we get an accurate quantity based framework. Can you provide something like this?

Great blog post. I’ve heard a little bit of this from “My Four Hour Work Week” so it’s cool to see another perspective on it. Glad to see you’re seeing success, as well. Thanks for sharing and keep up the great work!

Hi Pat, firstly congrats on the great rankings – way to go! And secondly,thanks for the shout out again regards the 40 Day Challenge – much appreciated!

Yup, Scroogle is a great tool and provides for far, far more accuracy in checking general Google dot com rankings than does a search in Google itself which is biased towards the country (Google database) that you are located in and thus searching from. So, for example, as you mentioned in your video, the person in Finland will find that there is a bias for Finnish websites to rank well above yours when checking with a basic Google search. Same for UK, same in Germany and so on so forth.

There are other tools that can be used rather than Scroogle if you want to locate your rankings within an exact country/ location. Not everyone needs that facility of course, but it can be very useful to know…

And regards your mention re long tail keyword rankings – cannot be over-estimated Pat! Just as a simple example, one of my sites went from 2 thousand unique visitors per month to around 22 thousand unique visitors a month purely on long tail keyword rankings. The site does not rank for any short tail (highly searched for) keyword phrases that I know of, and I certainly did not SEO for any of the short tails. Its all down to long tail keyword phrases, which are far, far easier to rank for than short keyword phrases, as you very rightly mentioned in your post!

No doubt we shall be seeing you at the very top very soon for your main keyword phrase of choice Pat!

Love the Problogger-style video up at the top (even has that patented Problogger feel to it). It’s great how you always keep the user-experience first.

Your point about long-tail keywords is worth repeating. Too often we’re so sucked into optimizing for that one magic keyword or keyphrase that we forget that a huge chunk of our traffic (REAL traffic) will come from search queries that we never intended to capture. It’s just another example of how genuine content will always win out over trying to “beat” Google. Something that you and Joseph are all about…

Wow what an achievement…It showz your Commitment and harwork..Keep it up..Even now I am on my way to be first in Google on My Niche(Movies). You are really inspirational to me to beat all worries and Keep rocks..A Great lesson to all newbies in Blogging.Cheers

Congrats Pat! You are crushing it so far! I think it would be interesting if you did something like two weeks of conversions with Adsense, two weeks of conversions with affiliate products, and then possibly create a product and see what your conversions are there to see where the best money is at.

I’m falling way behind on the niche duel. I’ve been busy on some other stuff (which is no excuse) and ScrapeBox has “sandboxed” a lot of my pages. I think it is time for me to do more whitehat stuff that you outlined in a previous post and some other sneaky stuff that I have yet to post about

Paaat congrats my man. Clearly you we’re doing a lot of things right. I’m still floating several pages from the front but still aiming for that front page prize. Anyway great job and cheers kicking ass in the duel.

That’s awesome man! Congrats on finally cracking that top 10 ranking. Like you mentioned, the key is to keep pumping out high quality content. That’s my only problem – Sometimes it can get boring writing about the same thing for a few days. How many pieces of content are you publishing per day on your niche site? Are you distributing that content across other article directories and related websites as well?

Hi Pat!
Like they say: the proof is in the pudding! Thanks for showing us all it takes to get ranked No.1 on the Big Ol’ Google – what I thought was intimidating might not actually be at all! This is the confidence you help instill in others – and that is why I keep coming back to your blog!

I just discovered scroogle.org a few days ago. I love it. It’s helping me find the best 100 sites for keywords I want to rank for when my ebook gets published. I might even start using it instead of google for my daily searches. Glad to know you think it’s a good tool as well.
Congrats on the ranking!

Pat – a huge congratulations to you! This has been an inspiration to me and I’ve started a concerted campaign to build more backlinks for my sites. I really enjoy watching your security guard site climb in the rankings and look forward to learning more.

Do you credit your article submissions as the key part of your strategy?

“This means that one of the best ways to get traffic is to write a lot of relevant content. The more posts you publish, the more chances there are for people to find your niche site through terms other than the one you are targeting.”

Good to hear Pat! Although I haven’t specified a niche for my blog, I write a lot about several topics that really interest me, and I too can tell that it helps me pick up those “long tailed keywords.”

Pat, as always the stuff you do is incredible and love to follow your blog. This Niche site challenge is a really great idea and it is cool because allot of people talk about making money online, but it is neat putting yourself on the line and actually walking through the actual implementation. Will be interested to see how you monetize. Take Care, Steve

I’ve put together my own niche site modeled after you and Tyrone at http://www.thesnowconestand.com. Feel free to add it to the challenge. Thanks for all you do!

Pat

Cool Adam! The thing is, I’ll need you to send me a link to a blog or somewhere where you report about how your niche site is going. I don’t actually link to the niche sites themselves. Let me know. Thanks and good luck!

Jim

Hey Pat. Just a little word of warning to your users. I noticed you promote Market Samurai. I’ve never used that particular product, but I did start using “Auto Blog Samurai” which I believe was developed by the same company. Anyway, after less than one week of use, I received my first “Copyright Infringement” notice from a fellow blogger. Not good. Not only have I exposed myself to legal problems, it makes me look very bad among others in the industry. The reposting of RSS feeds (which is what Auto Blog Software does) is a very touchy subject and it is my opinion that Auto Blog Samurai has not “seriously” addressed those issues. Anyone using that software better really do some research on rss copyright infringement before using this software on their blogs.

Keep up the great work Pat. We all appreciate it.

Pat

Hey Jim – thanks for that notice, however Market Samurai is NOT run by the same company, and Market Samurai is a market research product with does not automate anything except researching keywords and keeping track of rankings for websites.

Obviously, if you’re posting other people’s content on your own site and taking credit for it, that’s a big no no. Sorry to hear you’re going through all that stuff right now, I hope it all works out.

Jim

Thanks for clarifying that. That’s too bad for Market Samurai which appears to be delivering a good product. I hope not too many people associate the two as I did. I can’t believe I fell into that trap. I should have known better. Please don’t feel like you need to respond to this final thought. You have more informative comments to reply to.

Pat great stuff. One thing I’ve come to realize though, every money making guy kept say “backlink” is a must. And another thing, how easy it is to get on google front page. But yet, for us who follow their step-by-step blueprint we still find it hard with little to no result. Is there some big tricks behind the scene you guys are not telling us?